1.1 Pilot Now, though, the trendy thing is to have your protagonist be the monster, and iZombie – Rob Thomas’ latest – sees the zombie sub-genre finally reach that crucial point in its cycle. Our set-up is this – promising, over-achieving doctor Liv (Rose McIver) goes to a boat party that happens to be hit by a sudden zombie outbreak. She wakes up in a body-bag, realises she’s (un)dead, and we then pick up with her months later when her once-perfect existence has more or less imploded. She’s broken things off with her fiancé, become somewhat estranged from her family, and taken a job at the morgue for easy access to the brains she needs for sustenance. The show is loosely based on the DC comic by Chris Roberson and Michael Allred, but otherwise seems very much like creator Rob Thomas’ brainchild. The comparisons to Veronica Mars are all too easy to make, what with the voiceovers, the procedural detective element and the slightly snarky female protagonist at its centre. It’s all familiar in the best way, however, with there being little about iZombie that doesn’t feel completely fresh. It’s somewhat comparable to In The Flesh, which used zombies in a similar fashion to portray the ‘otherness’ of its main character. Like Kieren Walker, though, Liv is also recovering from a significant traumatic experience that led to the end of her life, and the potential for the show to explore this element of mental health at the same time as being a fun zombie detective show is very, very exciting. She also, of course, has a team around her. First up is Dr Ravi Chakrabarti (Rahul Kohli), her co-worker at the morgue and self-titled ‘eager ally’, who will be the guy bringing in bodies while trying to find a way to cure Liv’s condition, and then there’s Clive (Malcolm Goodwin), the detective with whom she will solve the subsequent investigations. What we briefly see of both is fine, though Ravi is the standout so far. Aside from one gross-out eating scene, there’s surprisingly little horror in iZombie. It’s a dramedy in the same vein as many of Thomas’ other shows, but it so far displays no interest in being a part of the horror genre at all. It’s actually the perfect example of everything The CW does brilliantly, with an endearing female main character, a seamless blend of comedy and drama and an ensemble you could immediately fall in love with, and so fits directly into the little renaissance the network is having right now. In the long-term, we can presumably expect the weekly procedural element to be weaved into a bigger, ongoing arc about the zombie attack, again, much in the same way as Veronica Mars had Lily Kane’s murder mystery hanging over Veronica all through its first season. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
